Elie Hobeika's Legacy is his work towards eliminating Sectarianism and Confessionalism from the Lebanese Power Structure, in order to build a Modern Society in Lebanon, keen on Social Justice and Good Governance. He favored de-confessionalizing the Lebanese Government and ALL Political life, provided all participants in the democratic process commit themselves to constitutional separation of church & state...

3/09/2009

The Bush-Casey CIA team had Iran "cover story" prepared in SS Poet affair

CIA-Casey cover story tried to link disappearance of Poet to Gambino crime family. Wrong crime family, it was the Bush crime family....

The Bush-Casey CIA team had Iran "cover story" prepared in SS Poet affair

After secretly sending weapons to the Iranian regime of Ayatollah Khomeini in a deal to ensure U.S. hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran were kept there until after the November 1980 election, the secret team of George H. W. Bush and William Casey and a number of current and former CIA clandestine services officers prepared a cover story prior to Ronald Reagan's January 20, 1981 inauguration in the event the transport ship, the SS Poet, was identified as being in Iranian waters during the transition phase from Jimmy Carter to Reagan.

The SS Poet departed Philadelphia on October 24, 1980, on an official voyage to Port Said, Egypt with a declared cargo of corn but it was transporting arms and war plane spare parts to Iran and its route went around the Cape of Good Hope instead of through the Straits of Gibraltar. WMR previously reported the Poet was sunk by an Israeli covert military team in order to wipe out any trace of the ship and its crew of 34. Tetra Tech International, a CIA front company with offices in the same 1911 North Fort Myer Drive, Rosslyn, Virginia address as Universal Shipping Company, the Poet's charter agent, had full control over the security of Oman's Masandam peninsula. The Poet would have had to sail past the peninsula and through the Strait of Hormuz, after delivering its weapons cache to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas.

In a January 18, 1981 Associated Press story datelined Camden, New Jersey and titled "Report Says Freighter May Have Been Hijacked To Iran," the wire service reported on a story the same day in the Courier Post of Cherry Hill, New Jersey that stated that Britain's Scotland Yard and "several" U.S. agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), were "investigating the possibility that a missing American freighter was hijacked as part of a deal by New Jersey mobsters to buy Iranian heroin."

The report stated: "classified cables between the DEA and Scotland Yard indicate . . . investigations began secretly about Dec. 12, four days after the Coast Guard declared the Poet officially missing and its crew 'presumed dead.'"

The report continued: " On Dec. 12, the Central Drug Intelligence Unit of Scotland Yard informed the DEA's London Office by cable that the Poet might have been part of a bizarre high seas hijacking, the story says. 'We are investigating the disappearance of the Poet as it is possibly related to drug trafficking,' said James Judge, a spokesman for the DEA regional office in New York. The probe centers on an exotic plot by organized crime figures to exchange the Poet's cargo of 13,500 tons of corn bound for Port Said, Egypt, for a large shipment of heroin, the report says. Investigators from the United States and Europe told reporters they strongly suspect the Poetwas seized by drug smugglers while en route to Egypt, according to the report, a joint effort by the Courier-Post and Gannett News Service. The ship's communication system was destroyed and with a name change and forged documents, the vessel was diverted to Iran, the investigators reportedly said. DEA and Scotland Yard officials say family members of the late reputed South Jersey mob boss Carlo Gambino masterminded the drug deal, according to the report. Neither the Gambinos nor their lawyer could be reached for comment. Scotland Yard officials would neither confirm nor deny reports of their investigation. Spokesmen for the FBI, Coast Guard, National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and U.S. Commerce Department have acknowledged only that separate probes are underway."

The involvement of Scotland Yard indicates that the group behind the Poet's shipment of weapons to Iran solicited the support of the Margaret Thatcher government in providing a cover story if the Poet were to have been identified in Persian Gulf waters. The report also does not state that the Khomeini regime cracked down on the heroin trade and was meting out the death penalty to drug dealers, which makes the alleged drug connection with the Poet's disappearance laughable. The involvement of the Coast Guard, DEA, NTSB, FBI, and Commerce Department in the "drug investigation" also indicates that they were all co-opted by the incoming Reagan team to support the Poet cover story if it was necessary.

Lloyd's of London, which later paid out a $1 million insurance claim on the Poet, scoffed at the story about the ship being hijacked to Iran by drug dealers. Lloyd's crack insurance investigators would have checked out such a report thoroughly in their claims investigation.

The Coast Guard later concluded the Poet simply vanished in the mid-Atlantic without a trace and without an SOS. On December 9, 1980, at a Coast Guard-NTSB board hearing in Philadelphia, William Seiger, representing the Radio Officers Union in New York, stated that "even a severe storm [that officials suspect sank the freighter in the Atlantic Ocean] shouldn't have interfered with the radio transmission." He told the board, "High waves, heavy rains, even lightning wouldn't affect a ship's ability to transmit on high radio frequencies." Seiger said such a transmission would have only taken 30 to 40 seconds to send. A former Poet captain, Capt. Lyle N. Clemens, who sailed it as late as August 1980 said the ship was "very good for its age," adding, "I was quite happy with the Poet." Clemens had sailed the vessel to the Dominican Republic, Egypt, and Israel. The Poet was the largest U.S. ship to have disappeared in modern times without a trace.

In a November 26, 1980, article in The Washington Post by Eugene Meyer, reported that at a marine board hearing in Philadelphia, the families of the crew of the Poetsuspected that Poet owner Henry Bonnabel was covering up details of the Poet's actual mission. Bonnabel was the owner of Hawaiian Eugenia Corporation, owner of the Poet. Bonnabel also had a financial stake in a number of other shipping firms. Bonnabel said he was not concerned when the Poet failed to make its radio reports every 48-hours as required. However, given that the Poet was on a secret mission arranged for by Bush, Casey, and CIA officers, it would have maintained radio silence. According to the Post, one of the lawyers representing the families shouted to Bonnabel after his statement on the lack of radio contact with the ship, "You knew where this vessel was all along! . . . You knew the route and you knew where it was and you did nothing." Family members said their telegrams to the Carter White House had gone unanswered. Keeping his report within the bounds of CIA spin, for which the Post is infamous, Meyer reported: "Families, grasping at straws, speculated that one of the steamer's holds, whose hatch the inspectors couldn't open, contained secret weapons. But according to testimony and other evidence, that hold was empty."

Arms for Iran were loaded into the aft number 4 cargo hold.

WMR has reported that the hold in question, the aft number four cargo hold, was laden with weapons and aircraft spare parts at the Girard Point marine terminal in Philadelphia. The hatch to the hold had been welded shut to keep U.S. Customs cargo inspectors from examining it prior to departure.

The Coast Guard delayed a search for the ship until ten days after the ship failed to transit the Straits of Gibraltar. The Poet was due at Port Said on November 9. The Coast Guard did not begin its search for the ship until November 8.

President Jesse Calhoon of the National Marine Engineers Beneficial Association of the AFL-CIO sent a letter to President-elect Reagan on December 1, 1980, concerning the Poet. In a press release, the union stated:

"'[the Coast Guard is guilty of] . . . shameful nonfeasance - if not criminal negligence' in its delay of 14 days to start a search for the missing ship S.S. Poet,enroute in late October from Delaware to Egypt.Calhoon requested of the president-elect that 'at the earliest possible time after becoming our nation's chief executive you direct your secretary of transportation to initiate a thorough-going survey and overhaul of the Coast Guard.'

Calhoon said the families of officers and men of the missing S.S. Poet 'will hail your action in putting the coast guard back on a course of service to the people whom they are legally required to help.' The Coast Guard,Calhoon added, 'should be, but for too long has failed to be, an alert, responsive and totally reliable branch of the governmental service.'

The union president wrote to Mr. Reagan that the MEBA 'is outraged' at the failure of the Coast Guard to recognize or act upon the absence of any regular communication from the S.S. Poet to the coast guard's Amver Wireless Service. The last report from the ship was on October 28 [in fact, it wasOctober 24] when it cleared Cape Henlopen, Delaware, and headed into the Atlantic. The first Coast Guard search planes flew out on November 8, only after complaints by MEBA.

Calhoon added that 'our bitterness over this bureaucratic lethargy' was compounded by 'propaganda pictures on the network television news shows of the U.S. Coast Guard entering the air space of the Bahamas to drop food packages to a group of Haitians who had become stranded while seeking illegal entry into the United States.'

MEBA was told, Calhoon added, that Coast Guard airplanes could not be assigned to the 'search for survivors of the S.S. Poet, who are American citizens, because of the use of air rescue apparatus for a group of non-American citizens.'

The MEBA President predicted that 'nothing is apt to come out' of the Coast Guard's hearing on the case of the S.S. Poet because the process is one in which "the coast guard is prosecuting attorney, judge and jury."

For obvious reasons, the union never heard back from the Reagan transition team or the later Reagan administration.

In September 1982, two large shipping companies, Sea/Land Services, Inc. and United States Lines, challenged the award by the U.S. Navy of a Military Sealift Command contract to American Coastal Lines of New York, a new company that had been formed by a Texas firm that had its business license revoked for non-payment of taxes. The two companies also cited a Defense Contract Administrative Service report that questioned the financing behind American Coastal. One od American Coastal's founders was John O'Hara, Merchants Terminal Management Corp. (MTMC), of Fort Worth, Texas. MTMC had its Texas business license pulled in February 1982 for non-payment of taxes. O'Hara then set up Merchants Terminal Corp. as a Delaware corporation to take MTMC's place as an American Coastal partner.

At the time American Coastal first bid on the U.S. Navy contract, the President of American Coastal was one Henry Bonnabel, who was President of International Cargo and Ship Cartering Consultants Inc. in addition to being the President of Hawaiian Eugenia Corporation, the owner of the Poet. Edward Sheppard, American Coastal's Washington-based lawyer, told the Washington Post that as far as Bonnabel was concerned, "he'sa decent, honorable guy . . . ships go down all the time. He came out of that incident [the Poet incident] without any fault being found."

http://lebaneseresistance.blogspot.com/

Disclaimer: the posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein.

RTC

MY FRIEND ELIE HOBEIKA, HK

MY FRIEND ELIE HOBEIKA, HK

One can see the wisdom in his very visage. The hazel eyes, glowing from sockets lined with deep suntan emotions, beam with the brilliance of a limelight. His hair, looking like spun silver, sits neatly in place upon his head. Yet, as he nods slightly, it sparkles, each strand in concert, as if to echo the exuberance of his own nature.
His nose, strong and stately, arcs proudly above the overshadowed yet undaunted mouth. The lips, bold as they are, show incredible kindness and generosity, especially when he curls them into one of his particularly boyish grins. His countenance mirrors his being and in that beautiful angel face one can see a child playing in a meadow.
His forty six years do not show themselves in his posture. He stands tall, erect; and moves with unmitigated grace. Always dressed in perfect clothes, his bright colors dazzle and shine in the Lebanon sun. What a sight this man is to behold! The experiences, heartbreaks, loves, joys, and victories of forty six years of living, all combine into one fascinating embodiment within him, a Heroes' Hero and the greatest man ever.

DCC

FREE LEBANON'S FUTURE

Bashir Gemayel and ELIE Hobeika , ARE turning in their Graves, when they see

these pathetic " New Alliances " made in Neoconville USA , Midwifed by amine

Gemayel, between the so-called LF, Joumblatt " The NEW Darling of the

Neocons" Agent in Chief, the Killer Samir Geagea, Moufti JOUZOU, with

PLO/FATH of all people, The New Hariri STOOGES of Saad... and other

unsavory characters not worth mentioning here.

WALEED JOUMBLATT, Amine Gemayel, The Batrak , Geagea the monster,

and ALL the March 14th jerks, have permanently DERAILED, AND

ELIMINATED FOR GOOD, the heavenly gatherings of good will and

NONSECTARIAN MANIFESTATIONS of a NON-SECTARIAN NATIONAL

IDENTITY, FREE FROM THE SHACKLES OF FEODAL POLITICS...

The March 14th group decapitated the NATION with their petty sectarian
formulas.
Assef Shawkat is back with a vengeance, ASSEF SHAWKAT IS A MONSTROUS
SERIAL KILLER,NOW SUPPORTED BY THE WEST AGAIN.....
HE IS TRYING TO COME BACK WITH A VENGEANCE, PRECISELY BECAUSE OF
THE FAILURES OF THE MARCH 14TH PETTY SECTARIAN POLITICS, AND NOT
AT ALL BECAUSE OF THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DIVIDE, WHO ARE NATURALLY
EXERCISING THEIR RIGHT IN A PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY. MARCH 14TH
GROUP HAVE FAILED MISERABLY THE TEST OF HISTORY, AND THEIR
LEGACY WILL BE IN THE GUTTER OF LEBANON'S HISTORY, FOR THEY HIJACKED
THE DREAMS AND ASPIRATIONS OF SEVERAL GENERATIONS OF VERY TALENTED
YOUNG PEOPLE, FOR THEIR PETTY SECTARIAN AND BIGOTED POLICIES.

LET'S WORK TOWARDS ELIMINATING SECTARIAN POLITICS

FREE LEBANON IS : "MESSAGE" TO THE WORLD .

WE MUST FREE LEBANON'S YOUNG GENERATIONS FROM THE FEUDAL POLITICS OF A BLIND RULING "ELITE".

Bashir Gemayel and ELIE Hobeika , ARE turning in their Graves, when they see these pathetic " New Alliances " made in Neoconville USA , Midwifed by amine Gemayel, between the so-called LF, Joumblatt " The NEW Darling of the Neocons" Agent in Chief, the criminal Killer Samir Geagea, Moufti JOUZOU, with PLO/FATH of all people, The New Hariri STOOGES of Saad Hariri and other unsavory characters not worth mentioning here.

WALEED JOUMBLATT, Amine Gemayel, The Batrak SFEIR , the criminal Geagea, hungry for more Christian blood , because he has always been a serial killer and a murderer all his adult life, including 11 years in solitary confinement for murders committed in the 80s, and many other murders still to be judged, and ALL the March 14th whacko's, have permanently DERAILED, AND ELIMINATED FOR GOOD, the amazing gatherings of good will and NONSECTARIAN MANIFESTATIONS of a NON-SECTARIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY. The March 14th group decapitated the NATION with their petty sectarian and weak formulas, built around self aggrandizement of miserable individuals, who don't have enough legs to stand on... Assef Shawkat is back with a vengeance, ASSEF SHAWKAT IS A MONSTROUS SERIAL KILLER, NOW SUPPORTED BY THE WEST AGAIN.....HE IS TRYING TO COME BACK WITH A VENGEANCE, PRECISELY BECAUSE OF THE FAILURES OF THE MARCH 14TH PETTY SECTARIAN POLITICS, AND NOT AT ALL BECAUSE OF THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DIVIDE, WHO ARE NATURALLY EXERCISING THEIR RIGHT IN A PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY. MARCH 14TH GROUP HAVE FAILED MISERABLY THE TEST OF HISTORY, AND THEIR LEGACY WILL BE IN THE GUTTER OF LEBANON'S HISTORY, FOR THEY HIJACKED THE DREAMS AND ASPIRATIONS OF SEVERAL GENERATIONS OF VERY TALENTED YOUNG LEBANESE PEOPLE, FOR THEIR PETTY SECTARIAN AND BIGOTED POLICIES.